How to Become an Expert: Practice Makes Perfect

You call yourself an expert, but do you ever leave your comfort zone? Do you engage in practice or do you know your craft so well that you perform them all with mindless repetition? These are factors in “the 10,000 hour theory,” which Malcolm Gladwell popularized in Outliers.

Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, but he also defines what qualified practice is. And that includes always striving for improvement, stepping outside of your comfort zone and working on the aspects of your field that you’re not good at, among others.

Take Bill Gates, for instance. Gates completed his first computer program at the age of 13. That was back in 1968. By 1975, he dropped out of Harvard and founded Microsoft. In just seven years, Gates far surpassed Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. Few could argue that Bill Gates hasn’t achieved expert status in his field. So how long will it take you, and how many hours each week do you need to put in to achieve expert status? We’ve broken it down for you in the infographic below.